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House Republicans: Restore defense spending or the sick kids get it!

House Conservatives love those missiles and mangled bodies so much they’re willing to sacrifice US children and life saving technology to get some more. Here’s the latest shenanigan:

TPM — House Republicans have quietly returned to the stand-off driven approach to budgeting and must-pass legislation that was their hallmark before President Obama’s re-election. On Tuesday the House passed a measure directing House appropriators, in the absence of a budget agreement, to adopt spending levels in the Republican budget. That budget calls for enormous cuts to spending on everything from science research to education to health care, in order to rescue the Defense Department and other politically favored agencies from the ravages of sequestration.

The procedural move is technical, and it stems among other things from Republicans’ decision to abandon the very budget process they’ve demanded for the past four years. But it reflects their desire to jam Democrats and President Obama with spending bills that funnel billions of dollars out of domestic priorities into the Defense Department and other security programs, at the risk of a government shutdown.

These GOP clowns just never quit doing the bo-bo show do they? Doesn’t matter that they agreed to the sequester, that they demanded a budget, nope. Doesn’t count. All that matters to them is reversing the consequences of sequester, but only for the elephant in the room carrying an RPG, Americans and jobs be damned. Because FREEDOM!

Why do they do this you ask? Short simplistic version: the entire focus of today’s Republican Party is to reward their wealthy paymasters with ever more government subsidies, tax cuts, and other goodies. One way to do that is to free up money from other programs. Depriving the poor of help is easy, the poor don’t contribute to reelection campaigns so it’s safe, plus it has the added advantage of driving the poor reluctantly and desperately into the labor market regardless of how shitty wages may be. Shifting money from science and health work in a similar way, it leaves defense as the one of the only games in town.

Originally, the defense scam idea was to starve out social safety net programs by hyping defense threats and painting anyone who didn’t go along as unpatriotic or treasonous. After the cold war ended conservatives had to find a new enemy, fast, and terrorism came along in the opportune form of 9-11. Hence the zombie lies that Obama is weak on defense (Benghazi!) a terrorist or a terrorist sympathizer or Muslim, not borne of this nation, etc. It worked really well during the Bush years, so well they can’t let go of it even though unfunded endless trillion dollar wars were never really popular and are now wildly unpopular. That’s why they get excited whenever there is a possible terrorist threat or attack, they fondly remember the days following 9-11 when national unity was mistaken for unquestioned fealty to conservative policies.

Until they pay a measurable price at the ballot box they’ll keep it up. Even when it hurts then they keep falling back into the old habits; see general election, 2012. That cost will have to be taken out of their hide again and again until they get the message. Or until they no longer hold enough power to do any damage.

Comments

I mean, I understand your outrage and agree. But it sounds like you’re angry at the Republicans for “playing politics.” What they’re doing is making calculations for their political careers. Its disgusting yeah, but hardly unique to Republicans.

I’m not angry at them so much as determined to beat them. I’m also not so sure we can excuse this as “play.” Playing politics does not include items like voter suppression or denying healthcare after it was duly voted on and upheld by the Supreme Court, in fact that it is the diametric opposite of democracy.

Regarding voter suppression, I’m not sure if you’re talking about other tactics, but what comes to mind are the ID laws that were trying to get passed in 2012 – these were blatantly trying to make it more difficult for people that tend to vote Democrat. I view that as playing politics; you’re looking out for your own interests or your party’s interests ahead of the country’s interests.

That all depends on how we define “playing politics” though, so I definitely see where you’re coming from. I think its ridiculous, don’t get me wrong. I’m just cautious when it comes to pointing out the fucked up shit that is done in our country’s name and applying it to just one side. We all own some of the responsibility, even us constituents.

“these were blatantly trying to make it more difficult for people that tend to vote Democrat.”

Perhaps you should change that to:

“these were blatantly trying to make it more difficult for people to vote for who they want to vote for.”

I do not consider that playing politics at all. It’s a cut throat win at all costs situation where the will of the people is being thwarted. If that’s playing politics then any regime, no matter how brutal, no matter how much they fuck their people around is simply playing politics (and the implication is that that makes it ok)…